Chapter Twenty-Two: Why?

As I contemplate the events in my life, I am overwhelmed by a sense of their beauty and perfection. How marvelous—indeed, how bliss-assuring—is karmic law!

I feel no need to declare with jutting jaw: “I believe God’s law is just. I accept whatever pain He sends me as His will for me!” Rather, I laugh with sheer delight, for I know I’ve deserved all the suffering that has come to me in this lifetime. To me, the payment has not been an affliction: It has been a release!

Every slight, every insult, every seeming injustice, every attempt to destroy me is something I’ve deserved! I remember in my soul the injustices I’ve committed in the past. My Guru himself told me as many of them as I was able to absorb at the time. Ancient prophecies about me, which I discovered in India, told me of my past mistakes. I am only thrilled that in this life I’ve had the strength to withstand the waves of karma created by my own past actions, which threatened to engulf me in the present life. This is no cause for regret: It is cause for gratitude and rejoicing!

Everyone, equally, is a child of God. We are not sinners, though we may sin. We are not evil, though we have in the past performed many evils, even great ones. In our souls we are ever perfect. Our goal is to merge back, eventually, in God’s eternal Bliss.

Those disciples of my Guru who punished me so harshly were acting only as instruments of Cosmic Law. They believed—and rightly so, given their own narrow priorities—that they were acting on their guru’s behalf. They also believed that they were acting in his defense. I refuse to judge their actions against me, for I know that all of us are motivated by forces greater than ourselves. As Master wrote in Autobiography of a Yogi, “Thoughts are universally and not individually rooted.”

Have those disciples themselves created karma by their actions against me? That question is not mine to ask, or to answer. Nor, where I am concerned, is it the real issue. They have made grievous errors in their presentation of Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings, mission, and legacy—yes. This I firmly believe. Speaking personally, however, my fellow disciples have helped me immeasurably toward the destiny we all share: freedom in God.

I have felt it important in these pages to point out what I perceive as great errors in the way they have presented our Guru, above all in their determination to confine him within the narrow walls of an organization. His message is too vast to be owned by any single group.

I have written many songs in my life. My favorite of them all is one titled, “Love Is a Magician.” Let me finish this book by writing the lyrics here.